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Ask three people involved with recent e-learning phenomena, and they will probably treat you to three different definitions of e-learning 2.0, informal learning, blended learning and PLE. And should you get more than three different explanations for each, don't be too surprised. The terminology is still in flux.
All these terms describe trends in learning technology, tending towards collaboration, less rigidity in form, and personalization.
What is a PLE?
A personal learning environment is a system or a collection of services that put the learners in control of their own learning, giving them, to some extent, administrator access to their learning content. The PLE is sometimes made out to be the complete opposite of an LMS, a centralized learning management system, however the contrast need not be so radical.
Comparing a PLE to an LMS is, at the moment, a bit like comparing green apples and oranges. Learning management systems are well established and up and running in a number of incarnations, whereas the PLE is still in a phase where it seems one still has a problem determining whether it is a system or a concept, as discussed by Daniel K. Schneider, among others, in the Edutech Wiki article "Personal learning environment."
Personal and portable
Some conceptual differences between an LMS and a PLE are obvious. The LMS is usually primarily centered on the training and skill needs of an organization, be it an educational institution or a company. The courseware and information in an LMS are usually owned by the organization, not the individual user.
A PLE on the other hand is tied to the individual and should be able to follow you as you leave school, change departments, get a new job, or retire from work. But precisely because they tend to somewhat different needs and demonstrate different functionalities, there is nothing to prevent using a PLE and an LMS in parallel, or even having one communicate with the other if both systems are open to it. At least one example of the latter exists already.
So where can I find a PLE?
Dedicated software and systems for personal learning environments are still scarce, but both server and client applications exist that support PLEs more or less experimentally.
On the server side, there is open source application Elgg, which offers services such as news syndication, blogging and file sharing. While not necessarily geared towards education to begin with, the system markets itself as "firmly plac[ing] individuals at the centre of their activities", and offers integration with, amongst other applications, open source LMS Moodle.
Client-side application PLEX is being developed by Reload, well known for their SCORM testing tools. PLEX is still at a fairly early stage of development and is not for general usage, but aims to gather learning goals, learning resources, news syndication and various other resources in one place on your computer.
A state of mind
So is a dedicated system or API-based service integration necessary to have a PLE? Or can I gather the Web services and applications I use on a daily basis to acquire and organize knowledge and call that my personal learning environment?
Michele Martin supports the latter theory in her article "Seven Strategies for Supporting Personal Learning Environments at Work". She describes a PLE as "as much a state of mind as anything else", and defines it as a toolbox of Web 2.0 services for usage in a learning or work context. Each individual may put together their own set of services, or an employer or educational institution may offer or recommend a given set of services.
The learning curve
The basic idea of a PLE is to give control to the learner. Whether the learner wants or is able to take that control, is another question. As described so far, personal learning environments tend to appear as relatively complex systems or sets of services with a steeper learning curve than a centralized system such as an LMS. Integrated or not, a set of services with diverging logics and user interfaces may easily come off as more technically demanding. Whether that in itself is a problem, will of course differ with target audiences.
This, in turn, may be an argument for organizations helping their employees and students by offering sets or selections of services and, perhaps, training in putting together and using a PLE of one's own.
The DIY approach
Many of us already use a varied selection of Web services on a daily basis without describing them as parts of our learning or working environments. Below is a short guide to getting started in putting together your own toolbox for personal learning using existing, free Web services.
Note that most of these services have settings that allow you to specify how public you want the information you add to be. You can share all or some bookmarks with others, you can have a wiki completely to yourself or open it for anyone to edit. You're in control.
- Learning goals: What would you like to achieve? What do you need to learn to get there? Using 43things or Joe's Goals you can create your own list of learning goals. You can also blog about them and connect with others who share your learning goals (43things), or document your daily progress (Joe's Goals).
- Bookmarks: A learning environment requires an overview of learning resources, and a portable list of bookmarks is a good start. Try del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, which will also make it simple to find useful resources that others have bookmarked on your topics of interest.
- Updated information: Use RSS updates from blogs, news sites and magazines to stay up to date in your field. Combining this with a local e-mail client is quite common, but if you would like to keep the updates available online, try Web services Bloglines or Google Reader.
- Easy publishing: Give yourself essay assignments and enter a dialog with others in your field using a blog or a wiki. Try href="http://wordpress.com/" mce_href="http://wordpress.com/">Wordpress.com or Blogspot for straightforward blogging tools, or create your own hosted PBwiki to get a simple wiki tool where you can write collaboratively.
- Personal start page: Gather your tools and resources in one page using Protopage, Pageflakes or Netvibes, which all allow you to quite simply combine the most important search engines, news updates, image banks and other services you use in one place.
References
Article by: Jorunn Newth Danielsen, Mintra as
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